The Hidden City (19 page)

‘Oh, be reasonable, Cousin,' Aphrael coaxed. ‘The situation has changed. You're holding on to something that no longer has any meaning. There might have been some justification for “eternal enmity” before. I'll grant you that my family didn't behave very well during the war with the Cyrgai, but that was a long time ago. Clinging to your injured sensibilities now is pure childishness.'

‘How couldst thou, Xanetia?' Edaemus demanded accusingly. ‘How couldst thou do this thing?'

‘It was in furtherance of our design, Beloved,' she replied. Sephrenia was more than a little startled by the intensely personal relationship Xanetia had with her God. ‘Thou didst command me to render assistance unto Anakha, and by reason of his love for Sephrenia, I was obliged to reach accommodation with her. Once she and I did breach the wall of enmity which did stand between us and did learn to trust each other, respect and common purpose did soften our customary despite, and all unbidden, love did gently creep in to replace it. In my heart is she now my dear sister.'

That is an abomination! Thou shalt
not
speak so of this Styric in my presence again!'

‘As it please thee, Beloved,' she agreed, submissively bowing her head. But then her chin came up, and her inner light glowed more intensely. ‘But will ye, nil ye, I will continue to think so of her in the hidden silence of my heart.'

‘Are you ready to listen, Edaemus?' Aphrael asked, ‘or would you like to take a century or two to throw a temper-tantrum first?'

‘Thou art pert, Aphrael,' he accused.

‘Yes, I know. It's one of the things that makes me so delightful. You
do
know that Cyrgon's trying to get his hands on Bhelliom, don't you? Or have you been so busy playing leap-frog with the stars that you've lost track of what's happening here?'

‘Mind your manners,' Sephrenia told her crisply.

‘He makes me tired. He's been cuddling his hatred to his breast like a sick puppy for ten thousand years.' The Child Goddess looked critically at the incandescent presence of the God of the Delphae. ‘The light-show doesn't impress me, Edaemus. I could do it too, if I wanted to take the trouble.'

Edaemus flared even brighter, and the reddish-orange nimbus around him became sooty.

‘How tiresome,' Aphrael sighed. ‘I'm sorry, Xanetia, but we're wasting our time here. Bhelliom and I are going to have to deal with Klæl on our own. Your tedious God wouldn't be any help anyway.'

‘
Klæl
' Edaemus gasped.

‘Got your attention, didn't I?' She smirked. ‘Are you ready to listen now?'

‘Who hath done this? Who hath unloosed Klæl again upon the earth?'

‘Well, it certainly wasn't
me.
Cyrgon had everything going his way, and then Anakha turned things around
on him. You know how much Cyrgon hates to lose, so he started breaking the rules. Do you want to help us with this – or would you rather sit around and pout for another hundred eons or so? Quickly, quickly, Edaemus,' she said, snapping her fingers at him. ‘Make up your mind. I don't have all day, you know.'

‘What makes you think I need any more men?' Narstil demanded. Narstil was a lean, almost cadaverous Arjuni with stringy arms and hollow cheeks. He sat at a table set under a spreading tree in the center of his encampment deep in the jungles of Arjuna.

‘You're in a risky kind of business,' Caalador shrugged, looking around at the cluttered camp. ‘You steal furniture and carpets and tapestries. That means that you've been raiding villages and mounting attacks on isolated estates. People fight back when you try that, and that means casualties. About half of your men are wearing bandages right now, and you probably leave a few dead behind you every time you try to steal things. A leader in your line
always
needs more men.'

‘I don't have any vacancies just now.'

‘I can arrange some,' Bevier told him in a menacing voice, melodramatically drawing his thumb across the edge of his lochaber.

‘Look, Narstil,' Caalador said in a somewhat less abrasive tone, ‘we've seen your men. Be honest now. You've gathered up a bunch of local bad-boys who got into trouble for stealing chickens or running off somebody else's goats. You're very light on professionals, and that's what we're offering you – professionalism. Your bad-boys bluster and try to impress each other by looking mean and nasty, but real killing isn't in their nature, and that's why they get hurt when the fighting starts. Killing doesn't bother
us.
We're used to it. Your young bravos have to prove things to each other, but
we don't. Orden knows who we are. He wouldn't have sent you that letter otherwise.' His eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Believe me, Narstil, life will be much easier for all of us if we're working
with
you rather than setting up shop across the street.'

Narstil looked a little less certain of himself. ‘I'll think about it,' he said.

‘Do that. And don't get any ideas about trying to eliminate potential competition in advance. Your bad-boys wouldn't be up to it, and my friends and I would sort of be obliged to take it personally.'

‘Stop that,' Sephrenia chided her sister as the four of them moved through the corridorlike streets of Delphaeus toward the home of Cedon, the Anari of Xanetia's people.

‘Edaemus is doing it,' Aphrael countered.

‘It's his city, and these are his people. It's not polite to do that when you're a guest.'

Xanetia gave them a puzzled look.

‘My sister's showing off,' Sephrenia explained.

‘Am not,' Aphrael retorted.

‘Yes you are too, Aphrael, and you and I both know it. We've had this argument before. Now stop it.'

‘I do not understand,' Xanetia confessed.

‘That's because you've grown accustomed to the sense of her presence, sister,' Sephrenia explained wearily. ‘She's not supposed to flaunt her divinity this way when she's around the worshippers of other Gods. It's the worst form of bad manners, and she knows it. She's only doing it to irritate Edaemus. I'm surprised she hasn't flattened the whole city or set fire to the thatching on the roofs with all that divine personality.'

‘That's a spiteful thing to say, Sephrenia,' Aphrael accused.

‘Behave yourself then.'

‘I won't unless Edaemus does.'

Sephrenia sighed, rolling her eyes upward.

They entered the southern wing of the extended city-building that was Delphaeus and proceeded down a dim hallway to Cedon's door. The Anari was waiting for them, his ancient face filled with wonder. He fell to his knees as the light that was Edaemus approached, but his God dimmed, assumed a human form, and reached out gently to raise him to his feet again. ‘That is not needful, my old friend,' he said.

‘Why, Edaemus,' Aphrael said, ‘you're really quite handsome. You shouldn't hide from us in all that light the way you do.'

A faint smile touched the ageless face of the Delphaeic God. ‘Seek not to beguile me with flattery, Aphrael. I know thee, and I know thy ways. Thou shalt not so easily ensnare me.'

‘Oh, really? Thou art ensnared already, Edaemus. I do but toy with thee now. My hand is already about thine heart. In time, I shall close it and make thee mine.' And she laughed a silvery little peal of laughter. ‘But that's between you and me, Cousin. Right now we have other things to do.'

Xanetia fondly embraced the ancient Cedon. ‘As thou canst readily perceive, my dear old friend, momentous changes are afoot. The dire peril which we face doth reshape our entire world. Let us consider that peril first, and then at our leisure may we pause to marvel at how all about us is altered.'

Cedon led them down the three worn stone steps into his low-ceilinged chamber with its inwardly curving, white plastered walls, its comfortable furniture, and its cheery fire.

‘Tell them what's been going on, Xanetia,' Aphrael suggested, climbing up into Sephrenia's lap. That may explain why it was necessary for me to violate all the
rules and come here,' She gave Edaemus an arch look. ‘Regardless of what you may think, Cousin, I
do
have good manners, but we've got an emergency on our hands.'

Sephrenia leaned back in her chair as Xanetia began her account of the events of the past several months. There was a sense of peace, an unruffled calm about Delphaeus that Sephrenia had not perceived during her last visit. At that time, her mind had been so filled with obsessive hatred that she had scarcely taken note of her surroundings. The Delphae had appealed to Sparhawk to seal their valley away from the rest of the world, but that seemed somehow unnecessary. They were already separate – so separate that they no longer seemed even human. In a peculiar way, Sephrenia envied them.

‘Infuriating, aren't they?' the Child Goddess murmured. ‘And the word you're looking for is “serenity”.'

‘And you're doing everything in your power to disturb that, aren't you?'

‘They're still a part of this world, Sephrenia – for a little while longer, anyway. All I'm doing is reminding them that the rest of us are still out here.'

‘You're behaving very badly toward Edaemus.'

‘I'm trying to jerk him back to reality. He's been off by himself for the past hundred centuries, and he's forgotten what it's like having the rest of us around. I'm reminding him. Actually, it's good for him. He was starting to get complacent.' She slipped down from her sister's lap. ‘Excuse me,' she said. ‘It's time for me to give him another lesson.' She crossed the room and stood directly in front of Edaemus, looking pleadingly into his face with her large, dark eyes.

The God of the Delphae was so engrossed in Xanetia's account that he scarcely noticed Aphrael and, when she held out her arms to him, he absently picked her up and settled her into his lap.

Sephrenia smiled.

‘And most recently,' Xanetia concluded her report, ‘young Sir Berit hath been given further instruction. He is to turn aside and go to the town of Sopal on the coast of the Sea of Arjun. He hath advised the Child Goddess of this alteration of direction, and she in turn hath made the rest of us aware of it. It is the intent of the Troll-Gods to transport Sir Ulath and Sir Tynian to Sopal and to conceal them there in what they call “No-Time”. It is their thought that when our enemies produce Queen Ehlana to exchange her for Bhelliom, they might leap from their concealment and rescue her.'

‘No-Time?' Cedon asked, his face puzzled.

‘Suspended duration,' Aphrael explained. ‘Trolls are hunters, and their Gods have found a new place of concealment for them so that they're able to stalk their prey unseen. It's clever, but it has its drawbacks.'

Edaemus asked her something in that language Sephrenia had tried several times to learn but had never really been able to grasp. Aphrael replied, speaking rapidly in a rather dry, technical tone and making intricate gestures with her hands.

‘Ah,' he said finally, lapsing back into Tamul and with an expression of comprehension flooding his face. ‘It is a peculiar notion.'

‘You know how the Troll-Gods are.' She made a little face.

‘Didst thou in truth wring acceptance of thine outrageous demands from them?'

‘I had something they wanted.' She shrugged. ‘They've been trying to think up some way to escape from Bhelliom for three hundred centuries now. They didn't
like
my conditions, but they didn't have much choice.'

Thou art cruel, Aphrael.'

‘Not really. I was driven by necessity, and necessity's
neither cruel nor kindly. It just
is.
I kissed them a few times when I stopped by a couple of days ago, and that made them feel better – it did once they realized that I wasn't going to take a bite out of them, anyway.'

‘Thou didst
not!'
He seemed aghast.

‘They aren't so bad,' she defended her action. ‘I suppose I could have scratched them behind the ears, but that might have insulted them, so I kissed them instead.' She smiled. ‘A few more kisses and I'd have had them licking my fingers like puppies.'

He straightened, then suddenly blinked as if realizing for the first time where she was sitting.

She gave him another of those mysterious little smiles and patted his cheek. That's all right, Cousin,' she told him. ‘You'll come around eventually. They always do.' And she slipped down from his lap and walked back across the room to rejoin her sister.

‘That's
my
place!' a burly fellow of indeterminate race asserted threateningly as Kalten dropped his saddlebags and bed-roll on a clear spot under a large tree.

‘It
was,'
Kalten grunted.

‘You can't just walk in here and steal a man's place like this.'

‘Oh? Is it against the law or something?' Kalten straightened. He was at least a head taller than the other man, and he bulked large in his mail-shirt. ‘My friends and I are going to be staying right here,' he stated flatly, ‘so pick up your bed and all this other trash and go someplace else.'

‘I'm not in the habit of taking orders from Elenes!'

That's too bad. Now move away. I've got work to do.' Kalten was not in a good humor. Alean's peril gnawed at him constantly, and even slight irritations rubbed his temper raw. Some of that must have showed on his face. The other man backed off a few steps.

‘Further,' Kalten told him.

‘I'll be back,' the man blustered, retreating a few more steps. ‘I'll be back with all my friends.'

‘I can hardly wait.' Kalten deliberately turned his back on the man he had just dispossessed.

Caalador and Bevier joined him. ‘Trouble?' Caalador asked.

‘I wouldn't call it that,' Kalten shrugged. ‘I was just establishing some rank, is all. Any time you come into a new situation, you have to push a few people around to make everybody else understand that you're not going to put up with any foolishness. Let's get settled in.'